


Show an Affirming Flame

by redbrickrose



Category: Battlestar Galactica
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-18
Updated: 2009-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-03 07:45:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbrickrose/pseuds/redbrickrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She holds two contradictory truths in her hands; she chooses one and endures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Show an Affirming Flame

**Author's Note:**

> Time-line: Post "Rapture"  
> Beta'd by [](http://kita0610.livejournal.com/profile)[**kita0610**](http://kita0610.livejournal.com/).   
> Originally posted: 03/2007

Faces along the bar  
Cling to their average day:  
The lights must never go out,  
The music must always play,  
All the conventions conspire  
To make this fort assume  
The furniture of home;  
Lest we should see where we are,  
Lost in a haunted wood,  
Children afraid of the night  
Who have never been happy or good.  
-W.H. Auden "September 1, 1939"

 

Once she was on a basestar that caught fire in the control center. Cylons know machines. They know them well enough that it's jarring when they fail, when an organic, clinched piece of their ordered world goes askew and out of synch.

That was before all of this, but she isn't certain how long before. She didn't feel human time so distinctly then, when she was not developed by every second of every day. She was not so alterable, when she was not just one.

She, two other eights, and a six managed to put the fire out without too much damage to the ship. She doesn't think either of the eights was Boomer. She doesn't think the Six was Caprica. But that was before, so she can't be sure.

She'd gotten too close to it; it had licked up her arm, white hot and blindingly painful. Everything went surreal and searing and she remembers screaming. The others had gotten it out, as efficient in that as in anything, but it had left her panting and shaking, with her arm twisted and disfigured, the sick smell of it stinging the air.

It wouldn't have killed her, so that was the first time she killed herself. She woke up still shaking, but she never bore the scar at all.

***

When Sharon Valerii was a child on Troy, there weren't many apple trees and the ones there were had been planted by the colonists in barely fertile soil. They grew scraggly and produced fruit that was small and sour. Caleb and Layla had convinced her that the fruit at the top would be sweeter. They were older, and she'd wanted to prove she was as daring as they were, so she'd clambered up as high as she could go, scraping up her hands and her knees. Almost at the top, she had reached for one of the apples and lost her balance, tumbling hard from the upper branches. She'd braced herself on her left arm, which snapped under the pressure, shooting pain through her entire body. She'd curled in on herself, shocked into silence at the sight of blood and bone that broke her skin. The world tilted sharply and she passed out from the pain.

She was eight years old. The break healed clean, but Sharon Valerii, who would later be Boomer, would always bear the scar.

It never happened and if it had, it would not have happened to her. But Sharon Agathon remembers the sour sting of the apples and the sick, too-easy snap of bone. She bore the scar as well, _for authenticity_, the Six who would be called Caprica said, back when she was simpler, when she was cold-eyed and smiling.

Her arm is completely unmarked now, and she holds two contradictory truths in her hands. She chooses one and calls it Faith, and tries not to ever look backward.

***

Boomer hates her, and the knowledge leaves her disoriented and aching.

But she remembers Tyrol's hands on her, hard and quick and adoring, pressed against her in rooms off the hanger decks. She dragged him away from the raptor and the eyes of everyone who knew exactly what was going on, kissed him hot and breathless the second the door closed behind them, before she was even out of her flight suit, felt his breath slow and steamy against her throat.

That did happen, but not to her.

Tyrol will barely look at her, even after all this time. Boomer wouldn't look away. She was angry and open, bleeding resentment and challenge into the chasm between them.

Sharon Valerii would not have taken Tyrol's name, but Sharon Agathon was never Sharon Valerii. "Valerii" was a crutch and an anchor, a stain she was glad to wash away.

She feels like a usurper. She hates Boomer too.

 

***

She visits Caprica in the brig. She calls her Six like that differentiates her from anything and she thinks about context. Caprica's smile is desperate and unsure; she starts at every sound. Athena wants to reach for her and smooth her into stillness and conviction. More than that she wants to find Helo, wants to go back to their quarters and wrap herself around him and be thankful it was him she was challenged to love.

Caprica is being slowly destroyed by learned emotion and Athena feels obligated to watch. She's going to live through this if anyone is and she's never felt so alone before.

She's never been alone. It's strange.

Caprica sometimes looks at her and wishes she was Boomer. Athena knows that, but she doesn't mind because unlike everyone else on Galactica, Caprica never looks at her and actually _sees_ Boomer. Helo does, though he'd deny it to the grave. Adama must, despite everything, and she isn't sure he's wrong. All things equal but reversed, it could so easily have been her.

That was before. She'd have been the same, and she'd have pulled the trigger instead.

***

She stands naked in front of the mirror and studies herself, waiting for someone to walk in and ask what she's doing. They won't; they're her friends now, maybe, but they're still afraid. They'd be stupid not to be, and they've learned not to be stupid.

She calls herself Athena in her head. It's easy now that first person singular comes naturally. She wishes she could demand it of everyone, ban "Sharon" from their minds and define herself. There are symbols: an owl, a shield, an olive branch. She wants to brand herself with them. She wants to burn herself with Hera's name, tattooed across her breast or lower, below her belly along the line of her vanished c-section scar. It was red and sore to the touch and she felt it pull tight every time she moved. She was afraid of sudden movement for weeks, sure she was going to rip it open.

She's unblemished now, as though it never happened. She who sprang fully formed once again. She lets her hand drift lower and feels erasable. She wants to carve her identity into her skin, has wanted to ever since she came aboard Galactica. Now she's glad she didn't.

She'd only have to do it over again.

***

There was a knot of scar tissue in her stomach from the bullet she'd taken on Caprica. Helo never forgave himself for it and he used to trace it in his sleep. She would reach down and still his hand, entwine their fingers until he settled, and tell herself she was unique enough that it was really her he loved.

The night she got back with Hera she stripped her clothes off and stood in front of him defiantly, feeling exposed and tender, feeling awkward and raw; she could still smell the oil of her rebirth on her skin. Dizzy with nausea, she wanted nothing more than to scrub it away.

He stepped toward her, eyes gentle, hands ready to still her trembling. She wanted to claw him bloody; she wanted to sob and cling. He ran his hand, rough and callused, down the smoothness of her arm, across her stomach, unmarked by either bullet, lower still where he had touched a thousand times or never touched before. She closed her eyes and wished his grip was hard enough to bruise.

Behind her, Hera stirred, making cooing baby noises in her sleep.

She will weep for what she's lost. There will come a time when they will celebrate around her and she will toast salvation knowing she will never be whole again. But better that than the loss of this.

Helo whispers loyalty like a prayer against her skin; Boomer echoed betrayal in every accusatory stare. Adama believes in her while she wears the enemy's face; Caprica believes in faith and grace that may yet kill them all.

She holds two contradictory truths in her hands. She chooses one and endures.

Hera wakes her in the night. It's a low whimpering that Helo sleeps right through, but Athena wakes immediately, tuned in and centered. Hera quiets when Athena lifts her and hums a lullaby from a life that never happened.

She holds the only truth she knows in her hands, guarded like a covenant.

Her choice is long made, and Athena keeps her word.


End file.
